News In Brief 7/12/04

Boosey & Hawkes and Schott Musik International Announce Partnership

Boosey & Hawkes and Schott Musik International have announced a strategic partnership commencing in mid-July 2004 which they hope will expand and strengthen their respective market positions. The areas of operational collaboration comprise printed music, royalty processing, and an alliance in North America. Both companies will preserve the full independence of their publishing programs and product development.

Schott will be responsible for the sales, marketing, and international distribution (excluding North America, Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand) of the Boosey & Hawkes printed music catalogue. B&H will continue to develop new titles and to manage its own publishing program.

Boosey & Hawkes will provide centralised royalty accounting and copyright control services for the Schott companies using its specially developed software, tailored for the complexities of classical music rights management. B&H and Schott plan to offer these services to third-party music publishers in future.

In a North American initiative, Schott and Boosey & Hawkes will forge a new cooperative alliance. European American Music Distributors LLC, the US Schott affiliate that represents (other than for print sales) in the USA, Canada, and Latin America the catalogues of Schott, European American Music Corporation and Helicon Music Corporation, as well as the catalogue of Universal Edition for stage and concert uses, will relocate its operations to New York, where Boosey & Hawkes will manage its rental library, and also provide certain administrative services. As with the other initiatives, the independence of the publishing and creative functions of both publishers will be preserved.

Longest Concert Ever…Continues

At the stroke of midnight on September 5, 2001, a performance of John Cage’s ORGAN2/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible) began in the small German town of Halberstadt. Taking Cage at his word, it is not scheduled to conclude for another 639 years, but last week it moved two notes closer by adding an E and E-sharp to the G-sharp, B and G-sharp that have been playing since February 2003. If you’re intrigued, they’re looking for donors—you can even sign up to underwrite a particular year.

For project details, see this original NewMusicBox report: Cage Performance to Run Longer Than Cats

Moravec Reaffirms Ties to Subito Music Corporation

2004 Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Moravec and Subito Music Corporation have made a public announcement agreeing to extend their long-standing contractual relationship, which puts SMC as exclusive publisher of the composer’s works.

Moravec spoke complimentarily of the publishing house when the announcement was made recently. “I believe that my continuing partnership with Subito will yield considerable benefits for all concerned long into the future,” he noted. “With their state-of-the-art savvy, imagination, and strong work ethic, Steve Culbertson and the Subito team are poised to go on to ever greater success in the world of music publishing and promotion.”

Zwilich Named Saratoga Composer-In-Residence

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich has been named composer-in-residence at the 2004 Saratoga Performing Arts Center. During her tenure, Zwilich will take part in a pre-concert dialogue for the Philadelphia Orchestra performance of her Symphony No. 3 on August 13, and hear the world premiere of her Oboe Quartet on August 22.

Makan Accepts Assit. Prof. at U. of Illinois

Keeril Makan will be starting this fall as an Assistant Professor of Composition/Theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. Makan holds a Ph.D. in composition from the University of California, Berkeley where he has studied composition with Edmund Campion and Jorge Liderman, and computer music at the Center for New Music and Audio Technology (CNMAT) with David Wessel. Keeril spent a year in Helsinki, Finland at the Sibelius Academy on a Fulbright grant. He has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Paul Dresher Electroacoustic Band, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and the Del Sol String Quartet, and had performances by the New York New Music Ensemble, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Continuum, and Ensemble Nomad. He has received prizes from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP, and commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard and the Gerbode Foundation in San Francisco.